


gilded cage

by Marenke



Series: sea of bitterness [2]
Category: 16th Century CE RPF, British Royalty RPF, Historical RPF, Original Work
Genre: F/F, Historical, Historical Inaccuracy, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Suicide, lots of implications here, me looking at a historical character: wow lesbian rep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 11:49:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21178946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marenke/pseuds/Marenke
Summary: The skin in her body, pale as it is, was covered with red marks.





	gilded cage

**Author's Note:**

> wow i really hit my head on the keyboard and produced this. anyway i dont know SHIT abt kathryn howard other than what i saw on six (musical), the tudors and her wikipedia page. big F for me.  
also i chose the spelling kathryn bc i thought it was medieval-er than catherine

The skin in her body, pale as it is, was covered with red marks. She offered a sob, this little queen to be, and Marion couldn’t help but pity this girl. She scrubbed Kathryn’s body with the rough towel, trying to offer this girl some kindness.

Kathryn, sitting on the tub, covered in bruises that will blossom tomorrow and will be hidden by her clothes, sobbed into her hands.

“He won’t get better, will he?” She asked, raising her head from her hands, eyes wet and red. Her hair - auburn and like a fox’s pelt - was stringy around her, reminding Marion of a bunch of worms, crawling in bone-white ashes. “The king, I mean.”

“No, my lady.” Marion replied, trying to be soft, but softness had never been her strong suit; her voice came out harsh, harsher than expected, and she flinched as Kathryn did so. “Other queens… They have endured.”

The lite queen looked at her, eyes - brown, big, red - full of sudden curiosity, and Marion was reminded that this girl, married to a monster, was just a girl her age too. Marion, herself, were she in her place, would’ve been terrified as well. Marion tried to remember her mother’s kindness, but failed; the woman had died too soon to leave a mark in her memory.

“Have they? How?” Dipping the cloth on the pink-ish water, Marion chewed her bottom lip, trying to string her words together.

“I don’t know. Lady Cleves wasn’t… _ Requested _for the king’s bed. But my senior, Clemence, has told me that they find other lovers. People gentler than the king.” Kathryn rose from her seat on the bathtub, draping herself over the edge. Marion averted her eyes to the ground, trying to not blush. She had always found women more eye-catching than men, and it would be a sin to act on these feelings of her.

Kathryn looked at her, top to bottom, from her black hair and callused hands to the shoes with no polish and a mended hole on her apron. 

“Gentler lovers?” She echoed, and Marion nodded. “Men aren’t gentle. I know this firsthand.”

“Then women. Lady Cleves…” Marion caught herself saying, before shaking her head, hand flying to close her mouth. These weren’t her secrets to spill. “I’m sorry, your highness, this maid has overstepped her bounds…”

Kathryn shook her head, raising one hand, putting it on Marion’s face, wet and lukewarm. She rose Marion’s face, brown eyes meeting its match. Her eyes tried to see the expanse of flesh that had been hidden by the water, but she tried to be stronger than her wants, averting her gaze when she saw a strip of the flesh of her breasts. 

“No, not at all. You’ve given me a good idea. What is your name, again?”

“Marion Lovewell, your highness.” She replied, and the queen to be nodded. “If this maid may be of any use…”

“You will.” Kathryn eyed the surrounding room, and rose fully, Marion lowering her eyes to the floor - and mentally reminding herself to commit penitence later for daring to look at the king’s wife with lust in her heart - as the girl stretched. “Come to my bed tonight. Show me the _ gentler lover_.”

A blush fully took Marion’s face, wild and unable to be stopped.

“My queen, I, I…”

“It’s an order. I’ll just say you’re my bedmate.” A giggle, childish, like the girl in front of her. “_Bedmate_. Isn’t that funny, Marion?”

No, it wasn’t. She was fearing for the state of things, suddenly, if this girl was to be queen.

“Yes, my queen.” The lie came easily, and Marion gulped it down.

* * *

Kathryn was good in bed, and Marion was sure that half the castle had heard her moans - or would have, hadn’t Kathryn tied her mouth with a silken handkerchief, grabbed her face in her soft hands (hands of a girl who had never worked a day in her life, a girl whose beauty carried her everywhere) and said “you look so _ pretty _like this” before giving her breasts attention, open mouth languid and tantalizing.

The queen to be hadn’t allowed Marion to touch her in the same ways Kathryn touched her - another silken scarf, tying her hands together, above her head -, and she felt egoistical; the queen had given her the pleasures of the flesh, and Marion hadn’t been able to give her the same. Selfish; yet another penitence to her pile of sins.

She put her face in her freed hands, trying to contain the heat that spread through her cheeks. This wasn’t the life her mother had envisioned for her when she was a babe, surely; did any mother wish for their daughter to become a bed companion to royalty - well, at least the chances of birthing a bastard were in the negatives. 

By her side, the queen to be slept peacefully, the bruises that made her skin a flowerbed of terrible purple and green flowers. Marion, unmarried as she were, did not see rhyme or reason to beating up your spouse. If she were damaged internally, she wouldn’t be able to bear children, right? The thought process of the king eluded her.

But it wasn’t for Marion to think, and yes to work. She took a strand of the fox-colored hair from Kathryn’s face, put a blanket atop of her, and dressed herself, yawning. Her bed waited for her.

“You’re not going to stay until sunrise?” Said the queen to be, and Marion caught herself, tying her skirt in place. Kathryn sat down, the blanket Marion had lovingly put on top of her falling and revealing her bosom, bare and full of bites whose teeth did not match Marion’s. Jealousy swept through her, and she smothered these feelings. “How rude to your queen.”

“Pardon me, your highness, this maid has to work.” Marion replied, offering a small bow. Kathryn picked a strand of her own hair, analyzing it between two fingers, cold and calculating.

Her bust seemed so inviting, though, ample and ready for sucking.

“Your work is with me, right now. _ Sleep_.”

A pause. A cautious smile took Marion’s face as she straightened herself. These feelings, forbidden as they were, could be allowed if they were an order from above. Right? Her head would probably still roll, were this information to get out, but at least there could be a chance of surviving. _ Probably _.

“Is it an order, your highness…?” Marion asked, and Kathryn smiled, fox-like and sensual. Heat pooled in Marion’s belly, deep down, and she wanted to pray - had a demon of lust overtaken her?

“Are you defying your queen? Cheeky, aren’t we?” She motioned for Marion to come to the bed once more, and Marion obeyed, climbing into bed, onto Kathryn’s arms. “Good girl.”

Marion felt something warm fall onto the crown of her head, but if the queen to be was crying, then it wasn’t Marion’s duty to notice if the girl didn’t want it noticed.

* * *

The king called for Kathryn every two days. Marion bathed her on the aftermath every time, washing away the bruises and marks the king left on his queen’s body.

After that, it depended on Kathryn’s mood if Marion was to be called to her bed or if Marion was to call another man (Culpeper, and Marion had to put on her best fake smile on the nights he was called to Kathryn’s bed, the jealousy in her like a green, horrible vine around her and whispering to ignore him, to pretend she hadn’t heard the queen to be word’s well; she saw Kathryn’s face, saw the displeased look and the sighs when she thought about calling in Culpeper, she _ knew_). 

Most days, it ended up being Marion - the worst days, when the king, on his drunken foolishness, was a rotten man, uncaring of Kathryn’s feelings, hurting her without cause or need, his mood written on the bruises of her skin.

Kathryn’s belly never grew big with a child, and Marion - Marion does not know if she’s worried or relieved. Was it a blessing or a curse?

She voiced this worry once to Kathryn, when the summer was high and the air was sweet with the smell of fruits even during the night, autumn a thought for another day. They were in bed, cuddling naked after sex, tired and sleepy, and Kathryn was ever so gently undoing the bounds on Marion’s hands.

“A _child?_” Kathryn snorted, and Marion inclined her head, kissing the salty skin of the queen to be’s wrist. “I’d be surprised if I could get pregnant. The Lord knows it’s not for a lack of trying.”

There were questions, vicious and biting, demanding answers on Marion’s tongue, but she didn’t know if she wanted to hear what Kathryn had to say.

Instead, she silences the questions by opening her mouth and sucking on the skin offered, the girl with fox’s hair grinning and petting her hair softly. She let go of her mouth before a bruise would form, and wriggled herself to face Kathryn, their fingers interlocking, the silken scarf abandoned.

“Kiss me until I believe I could carry a child of yours. I wouldn’t accept _anyone_ else being the father of my child.” Kathryn said, with a smirk on her face, and Marion - ever the faithful maid - obeyed, leaning in to touch Kathryn’s lip in an unchaste way.

* * *

The union lasts a year and a few months, barely enough. The queen to be never gets crowned before the king howls with anger and sends Kathryn away.

The night before, it is as if she knows, even though Marion herself was unaware of it. There were kitchen rumors, but there were _always_ kitchen rumors. They swirled around, as many as the meals they provided, and Marion always had ignored them, busy, focused solely on her (_hers?_ Could she say another man’s wife was hers?) queen to be, focused on making sure she was as happy as possible.

When Marion arrived to the queen to be’s bath, she found the girl herself intact. The king, seemingly, had had his mind wandering, and Kathryn stared at her hands, sitting on a small stool, fully clothed.

“Your highness?” Marion asked, frowning, setting aside the towel she had picked, going to her queen, kneeling on the cold floor to grab the girl’s hands. She was sure Kathryn hated them, hard and calloused as they were from years of work. Maybe that was why she called for Culpeper. “What is wrong?”

“Henry _rejected_ me tonight.” She started, slow, weaving a thread Marion couldn’t follow. “It’s… Strange. He is not like that. Marion, what if…”

Her eyes - brown, big, red; a mirror image of that scrawny girl from not so long ago - looked up, into Marion’s eyes, away from her hands.

“What if he wishes to throw me away? Oh, God, what if…” She shook, shoulders trembling and tears filling her eyes. Marion threw caution to the wind, kissing her without caring if anyone would come in and fulfill Kathryn’s fears, hands going through the fox-like hair, the queen to be (that would never be?) reciprocating, pulling her closer.

When they separated for a lack of air, resurfacing to the world as if they had been underneath the bathtub’s water, they looked into each other’s eyes, quiet and stilted, panting ever so slightly. 

“I know I don’t allow you to touch me,” Started Kathryn, slow still, every word carefully measured on her tongue, “, but tonight, I _ beg _of you to disobey that. Make me forget that other people ever touched me. Do you understand?”

“As you wish, my queen.” Marion replied, kissing Kathryn once more.

* * *

Marion had been long gone - Kathryn had sent her away soon after, and sleeping in her own bed with Kathryn’s taste heavy in her mouth made Marion want to cry for no reason she could discern - when the men came to raid the queen to be’s rooms. Marion found the news they had sent her to the nunnery mid-meal, and had to avoid being bitter when people started taking bets on when the king would take a new queen. Marion, for the first time in her short life, found herself not wanting to serve anyone.

* * *

Culpeper’s beheading, at least, is satisfying to watch. She’ll give him that.

* * *

She keeps working, toiling and doing her duties. _Waiting_. When the execution date for Kathryn comes, Marion slipped away from her duties, going to the crowd. It’s alright, she tells herself; half the servants do the same.

Marion elbowed the crowd just so she could see Kathryn better, a place of honor for her that she feels cruel to have.

When Kathryn arrived, she held her head high, trembling ever so slightly - fear, but she refused to let it show -, as she walked the stage. A queen to be, going to her coronation that would never happen, even in her final moments.

Marion caught Kathryn’s eyes as they swept through the crowd, deer-like for a moment before they continued. She spoke, high and mighty, practiced and regal, doing the theatrics royalty required when losing their head.

She put her head on the executioner’s block, and he swung his axe. One clean strike later, Kathryn’s head rolled near her, familiar brown eyes staring at her for the last time, and something within Marion died.

* * *

After the execution, the crowd stayed for a while, but Marion had no stomach for it. Instead, she left, using the fact people wanted to see the queen that never was’ head for the last time to slip away.

There was a river nearby, she knew, and it seemed to call her name with Kathryn’s voice, sweet and gentle.


End file.
